Overcoming South Asia’s Peace Spoilers

Though current political volatility in both India and Pakistan rules out full peace talks for the time being, that should not prevent the two sides from trying to resolve lower-level disagreements. This alone may not guarantee the success of negotiations, if and when they occur, but it could remove incentives to spoil them.

MONTREAL – Long-anticipated peace negotiations between India and Pakistan appear to have been delayed until after India’s May parliamentary elections, and the prospects for subsequent talks are not clear. Victory for Narendra Modi’s nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a resurgent Taliban in the wake of the United States’ impending troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, and Pakistan’s continuing failure to negotiate with or suppress the Pakistani Taliban, point to a period of intense uncertainty and potential conflict. But this is no reason to give up trying for peace.

True, Modi’s peacemaking credentials are already highly questionable, both at home and in Pakistan. He was Gujarat’s chief minister in 2002 when riots killed more than a thousand Muslims. Many fear that, as Prime Minister, he would polarize the entire country along communal lines. And, thus far, he has taken an uncompromising position on Pakistan, and will probably continue to talk tough, at least for the time being.

But Modi is likely to take cues from his BJP predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who visited Lahore in 1999 to talk peace with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif (who returned to power in 2013). There are good reasons for Modi to do so. Peace with Pakistan would strengthen his personal standing nationally and internationally, thus constituting a step toward fulfilling the BJP’s great-power ambitions for India. It would also help revive India’s weakened economy by spurring foreign investment, the benefits of which Modi has already seen in Gujarat.

Professor T.V. Paul is worried about the security in the Indian Subcontinent. Against the backdrop of Western troops' withdrawal from Afghanistan end of this year, the Taliban could "consolidate its power" there. The Hindu candidate Narendra Modi stands a chance to become India's next prime minister. Pakistan has failed to rein in its home-grown militants, some of whom had attacked India and others had tried to destabilise Afghanistan.
Paul hopes that, should Modi become prime minister, he ought to "take cues from his BJP predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who visited Lahore in 1999 to talk peace with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif (who returned to power in 2013)". Indeed Vajpayee continued to call on Pakistan to work with India towards peace, after Pervez Musharraf seized power in October 1999.
Shortly after Vajpayee came to power in Delhi, Islamabad was hopeful that he would bring a similar realistic attitude toward bilateral issues as when he was foreign minister in the late 1970s. The nuclear test explosions in May 1998 changed that irrevocably, as did anti-Pakistan statements. Pakistan's own nuclear tests followed, and so did an angry exchange of rhetoric. Yet in September 1998 Vajpayee and Sharif behaved as if they were old friends at the UN General Assembly session in New York, announcing revived peace talks and talking about signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT.
As Mr. Paul points out, "the biggest obstacle to India-Pakistan peace negotiations is their vulnerability to spoilers", and there are plenty around, on both sides of the Radcliffe Line. Divisive politicians had been in power both in India and Pakistan for decades, who often capitalised on the Kashmir-conflict for domestic consumption, unwilling to separate the conflict from other threats, particular nuclear and security related issues. Terrorism on home soil and even America's war on terror all came in for criticism, blaming each other or third parties for their political failure.

India and Pakistan became archenemies since the partition of the subcontinent in 1947. It left 10 million people uprooted and more than half a million Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus dead in riots and massacres. The two first went to war over Kashmir in 1948 and ended up dividing the region between them along a ceasefire line that still serves as a working boundary.
Sixty-seven years on, the status of Kashmir remains unresolved despite a tenuous peace process, following three wars, that highlighted the tragic consequences of their rivalry over the disputed region, with seasonal exchanges of fire and casualties along the border. Communal unrest as a result of Muslim-Hindu tension continues to surface from time to time in both countries.
India's goal has been to end tension as well as to have a stable government and make economic progress. Pakistan on the other hand has been urging India to settle the dispute over Kashmir, saying any improvement in relations with India hinged on that issue.
Relations seem to have improved slightly in recent years. Asif Ali Zardari made a rare visit to India in 2012, In 2005 President Pervez Musharraf used the cover of an Indian-Pakistani cricket match to hold talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Yousef Raza Gilani used a World Cup cricket match to meet. Britain may be long gone and faraway, but India and Pakistan do far more business with their former colonial master than each other.

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